Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
They understood that the Northern vote denying access to the territories of their slaves that access was being denied to them.
That statement suggests that 'the South' and 'slavery' are synonymous. Are we to believe that Southerners were incapable of occupying the lands in the territories without slave labor, like everyone else?
Quote:
It was clear that the Northern people intended to prevent Southerners from gaining access to those territories as long as they owned slaves.
Why is it assumed that if the territories were to become a nursery for slavery, that only southern farmers would benefit from starting up farms with slave labor. Is it not as reasonable to believe that a farmer from Illinois would be as equally capable of operating an enterprise in a territory with slave labor as a farmer from Missouri?
I maintain that keeping slavery from the territories was not possibly a violation of any state's rights.
Cedarstripper
Last edited by cedarstripper; 01-09-2006 at 04:24 PM.
You can say it was over slavery and you would be partially right, but the fact remains that without Constutional violations the Northern states could never have accomplished their political agenda. They had no right without amending the Constitution, to keep slaves or slaveowners out.
Rose,
I completely disagree with your assertions about "Constitutional violations." The federal government had every right to legislate slavery in the territories, and the founders understood this. The Constitution does not make slavery legal or illegal, it leaves it up to the states. However, there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent the federal government, which, after all is the government of the People of the United States and federal laws are the supreme law of the land, from legislating on slavery in the territories. Precedent backs up the right of the federal government to legislate slavery in the territories. In the Dred Scott case, Taney tried to settle this issue, but unfortunately only inflamed the situation. Lincoln had said that he disagreed with this decision, that it was incorrect, but that it was the law of the land until it could be tested again in the Supreme Court and overturned. The irony of the decade prior to the Civil War is that southern slave interests won pyrrhic victory after pyrrhic victory, apparently unhappy with any result but the absolute right to take their slaves anywhere. And if this wasn't enough, they wanted anyone who believed differently than them to shut up and stop exercising their freedom of speech and their right to act within legal Constitutional bounds.
best,
marc
__________________ "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." - Abraham Lincoln
The vote on passage of the bill was not a tie breaker, Rose. I included the text for you from the Senate Journal showing the 28 senators who voted yea- you can count their 28 names if you'd like. There were two ties that had to be broken before the vote on passage, one of which I included for you, which was a motion for the bill to be embossed and read a third time. The VP did not have to cast a vote on the final vote for "Shall the bill pass?", as Senator Jarnegan, a Whig from Tennessee, voted yea to pass the bill, whereas he had not voted earlier.
Not interested in political suicide, however, Dallas sought to avoid having to exercise his singular constitutional prerogative on the tariff issue, actively lobbying senators during the debate over Treasury Secretary Walker's tariff bill in the summer of 1846. He complained to his wife (whom he sometimes addressed as "Mrs. Vice") that the Senate speeches on the subject were "as vapid as inexhaustible. . . . All sorts of ridiculous efforts are making, by letters, newspaper-paragraphs, and personal visits, to affect the Vice's casting vote, by persuasion or threat."
Despite Dallas' efforts to avoid taking a stand, the Senate completed its voting on the Walker Tariff with a 27-to-27 tie. (A twenty-eighth vote in favor was held in reserve by a senator who opposed the measure but agreed to follow the instructions of his state legislature to support it.) When he cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the tariff on July 28, 1846, Dallas rationalized that he had studied the distribution of Senate support and concluded that backing for the measure came from all regions of the country. Additionally, the measure had overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives, a body closer to public sentiment. He apprehensively explained to the citizens of Pennsylvania that "an officer, elected by the suffrages of all twenty-eight states, and bound by his oath and every constitutional obligation, faithfully and fairly to represent, in the execution of his high trust, all the citizens of the Union" could not "narrow his great sphere and act with reference only to [Pennsylvania's] interests."
As I said, I'm not into splitting hairs and that is what we seem to be doing. I don't think who made that one vote is very important and I don't care to use my time in researching such a minor point. The above clearly states that Dallas cast a tie breaker vote. However, it does mention a senator with a reserve vote. I would tend to believe the Senate journals as being more thorough rather than the U.S. Senate website, but this is where I got my information.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cedarstripper
That doesn't do much of a job explaining both New York State senators voting to lower the tax and both Lousiana senators voting against it.
My point would be that political parties did not necessarily break along North/South lines or even slave-state/free-state lines..
I can only speculate but, Louisiana sugar growers traditionally voted for protection, however, the rest of the state grew cotton and indigo mainly. They would be against protection. In NY, it was apparently their agriculture section speaking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cedarstripper
My apologies if I've misunderstood you. You have stated that tariffs in 1860 became a new crisis for Southerners, and that southern states had seceded because they foresaw that they could no longer maintain a majority in Congress and would be defenseless against the protectionist Republicans. Now, you are stating that the Midwest's economic (agricultural) and tariff interests were more in tune with the slave-states of the South. So... the logical question for you is "Why would Southerners fear becoming a minority on tariff issues in Congress?" considering a growing Midwest and West that had little potential anytime soon of becoming industrial. Its not hard to see why the South would fear becoming a minority on slavery issues with a growing free-labor Midwest.
The West and mid-West agriculture interests were more in tune with the agricultural South, however, I have also stated that the West often voted with the industrialists for high protection in exchange for votes to promote infrastructure that would help get their product to the East for exporting.
The South feared becoming a minority on tariff issues in Congress because of the newly formed Republican party whose platform was similar to that of the Whigs. They favored high protection and Lincoln was their man. He described himself as, "an old Henry Clay Whig". Henry Clay, of course, was known for being a staunch protectionist. And don't forget, Lincoln promised to leave slavery alone, but he promised invasion if the South didn't collect tariffs.
The South was very concerned about the territory issue. It effectively cut them off into a small section that would have little political power to protect their interests in government.
Finally, to prove the Southern states were right about the future of tariffs if they should lose voting power in congress, once they seceded and tariffs went to an all time high, it was nearly into the middle of the next century before they began to recede.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cedarstripper
Thanks for the link to the site you were referencing concerning 17th century laws in Virginia and slaves. I have some excellent information on the establishment of slavery in Virginia, a preference to make slaves Christian, and the prohibition of negroes owning whites. I'll post it as soon as I have time to do the subject justice.
Cedarstripper
You are welcome.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
Dallas rationalized that he had studied the distribution of Senate support and concluded that backing for the measure came from all regions of the country. Additionally, the measure had overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives, a body closer to public sentiment.
In light of your claim that the tariff reduction was "hard won" in a cotton grower vs industrialist fight, what do you make of the above passage you pasted from the US Senate site?
Quote:
I can only speculate but, Louisiana sugar growers traditionally voted for protection, however, the rest of the state grew cotton and indigo mainly. They would be against protection. In NY, it was apparently their agriculture section speaking.
The West and mid-West agriculture interests were more in tune with the agricultural South, however, I have also stated that the West often voted with the industrialists for high protection in exchange for votes to promote infrastructure that would help get their product to the East for exporting.
None of the above seems to support the "hard won cotton grower vs industrialist" struggle either.
Quote:
And don't forget, Lincoln promised to leave slavery alone, but he promised invasion if the South didn't collect tariffs.
I don't think there's much mileage to be had with a selective reference to a pre-Ft Sumter address. Everyone here knows what the message of the inaugural address was and what the pledge to uphold the authority of the federal government was all about.
Quote:
The South was very concerned about the territory issue. It effectively cut them off into a small section that would have little political power to protect their interests in government.
Whenever slavery was denied, it is usually stated that the South was denied. Were the South and slavery somehow inextricably connected at the hip? That would be odd, considering 75% of southern families owned no slaves. Can you explain how political interests in the territories (or newly admitted states) would differ depending on whether they were slave of free, aside from slavery issues, or course? As you have already stated that their economic interests were pretty much in tune with the southern states, I can't imagine what the South was worried about with new states being admitted free (except for the slavery thing).
Quote:
Finally, to prove the Southern states were right about the future of tariffs if they should lose voting power in congress, once they seceded and tariffs went to an all time high, it was nearly into the middle of the next century before they began to recede.
What happened in consequence of the war I think can hardly be assumed to have been the same as had there been no war. Taussig wrote that the tariff act of 1862 and 1864 could never have been passed without the circumstances of the war needs to bear.
Rose,
I completely disagree with your assertions about "Constitutional violations." The federal government had every right to legislate slavery in the territories, and the founders understood this. The Constitution does not make slavery legal or illegal, it leaves it up to the states. However, there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent the federal government, which, after all is the government of the People of the United States and federal laws are the supreme law of the land, from legislating on slavery in the territories.
Rose seems to have tacitly backed off the assertion that prompted Marc's response, but it's worth noting that Marc is absolutely correct. The uniform, overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the federal government had the right under the Constitution to ban slavery in the territories. Don Fehrenbacher's book on the Dred Scott case documents in excruciating (although fascinating) detail the South's drive to "constitutionalize" the slavery-in-the-territories issue and the incoherence and intellectual dishonesty of Taney's Dred Scott opinion.
From the book The Peculiar Institution, Chapter One, 'The Setting', pages 19 - 21, by Kenneth M. Stampp:
"Outside the South reformers everywhere made the destruction of legal servitude one of their major goals. By 1860, economic liberals, who linked social progress with the concept of free labor in a competitive society, had won a series of decisive victories. In the northern states slavery did not long survive the social upheaval which was part of the American Revolution. Not because slave labor was unprofitable, but because they were given no choice, northern slaveholders accepted a domestic application of the principles which had justified resistance to British authority. During the 1780's, these states put slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction," usually through a system of gradual emancipation which took a generation to complete.
The new spirit was contagious. In Haiti, when the French seemed inclined to restrict the benefits of their own revolution to the white race, the Negro slave helped themselves to freedom by a rebellion which all but destroyed the old master class. In 1833, the British government made provision for the abolition of slavery in its possessions. Slavery entered a period of decline in the new Spainish-American republics, until the last of them abolished it during the 1850's.
But in spite of these cataclysmic events, most Southerners clung to slavery. It survived the ordeal of the Revolution and the assaults of the South's own revolutionary radicals. It survived the French Revolution, through Southerners shuddered at the price Toussaint L'Ouverture and his Negro followers exacted from Haitian masters. Slavery survived the liberalism of Jeffersonian Democracy and the egalitarianism of Jacksonian Democracy. It survived the persistent criticism and emancipation schemes of native Southerners, especially in the Upper South, and a month of antislavery debate carried on during January, 1832, in the Virginia legislature. It survived a thirty-year crusade against it conducted by northern abolitionists. Southern slavery more than survived: the slaveholders ENLARGED their domain, tightened the slave's shackles, and defiantly told outsiders to mind their own affairs. The South of 1860, big and prosperous, still boldly defended its peculiar institution.
Its trouble, however, was manifest in the term itself. For by 1860 chattel slavery had become in literal truth a peculiar institution, and Southerners knew it. The fact that they had inherited slavery and not invented it was now quite beside the point, and many Southerners knew this too. The one supremely relevant fact was that Southerners were among slavery's last apologists--that theirs was a "Lost Cause" even before they took up arms to defend it. Being culturally isolated, living in an unfriendly world, was a frightening experience which made many of them angry and aggressive. Outside of Africa itself, they now could look only to Brazil, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Dutch Guiana for societies which, like their own, contained masters and slaves. The rest of the world was inhabited by strangers."
It takes on an almost willful suspension of belief to think that the South did not leave the Union in open rebellion over any other cause than slavery. The men and leaders of the time made it very clear, over and over again, that they felt that the only way they could be sure that the institution of slavery would be secure would only be by leaving the Union.
They declared it the reason, in their speeches, their papers and their declarations. It cannot be mistaken for anything else.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Rose,
I completely disagree with your assertions about "Constitutional violations." The federal government had every right to legislate slavery in the territories, and the founders understood this. The Constitution does not make slavery legal or illegal, it leaves it up to the states. However, there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent the federal government, which, after all is the government of the People of the United States and federal laws are the supreme law of the land, from legislating on slavery in the territories. Precedent backs up the right of the federal government to legislate slavery in the territories.
It has been argued since the beginning of the Constitution as to how it should be interpreted. I have always believed it should be interpreted in the strictest sense. The tenth amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
I see nothing to argue there. It is plainly stated and it says nothing about "implied" powers.
The Federal Government had, as you say, every right to legislate slavery in the territories. However, as those territories became states the Federal Government no longer had that right. If all states in the Union are here on equal footing the new states had the same sovereignty as the old states and that included the right to decide slavery at a state level.
Slavery needed to be abolished but, the Northern states were going about it in the wrong way. It was unconstitutional and unfair to the slaveholding states.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marcferguson
In the Dred Scott case, Taney tried to settle this issue, but unfortunately only inflamed the situation. Lincoln had said that he disagreed with this decision, that it was incorrect, but that it was the law of the land until it could be tested again in the Supreme Court and overturned.
How could Taney have ruled any differently and still been acting within the law? As much as I believe Scott should have been freed, I can see that it wasn't within the legal limits of Taney to grant such a thing. Taney's decision was legally right and morally wrong. I'm glad I'm not in a position to have to make such decisions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by marcferguson
The irony of the decade prior to the Civil War is that southern slave interests won pyrrhic victory after pyrrhic victory, apparently unhappy with any result but the absolute right to take their slaves anywhere. And if this wasn't enough, they wanted anyone who believed differently than them to shut up and stop exercising their freedom of speech and their right to act within legal Constitutional bounds.
Marc, can you give an example of what you mean? What victories are you speaking of and in what instance did the Southern people want the Northern people to stop exercising their freedom of speech? And what Constitutional rights were the Southerners wanting to deprive the North of?
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
-----------------------
Yes, in fact you have read it because I posted a few of their statements last time you made that claim.
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." [Mississippi Declaration of Causes]
"Our people have come to this [secession] on the question of slavery." [Lawrence M. Keitt, South Carolina Secession Convention]
"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery." [Henry L. Benning to the Virginia Secession Convention, 18 Feb 1861]
Regards,
Cash
Cash, with all due respect, the three statements you provided do not even begin to cover all aspects of the causes for secession. These gentlemen had no authority to make conclusions for the states. The Declaration of Causes documents speak for the states. Slavery was, indeed, a large part of the causes, but why? Because of interference in state sovereignty and rights. Slavery may have been the catalyst, but the real, underlying cause involved the very foundation of state's rights. It was not, and could never be, acceptable to the Southern states to allow the Northern states to dictate state issues regarding slavery or any issue, anymore than it would have been acceptable to the industrial states for the Southern states to attack their slave-wage labor force or the poor working conditions in the factories.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Black Republican, to the Presidency of the United States by a purely sectional vote and by a party whose leading and publicly avowed object is the destruction of the institution of slavery as it exists in the slave-holding States; and whereas, the success of said party and the power which it now has and soon will acquire greatly endanger the peace, interests, security, and honor of the slave-holding States, and make it necessary that prompt and effective measures should be adopted to avoid the evils which must result from a Republican administration of the Federal Government, and as the interests and destiny of the slave-holding States are the same, they must naturally sympathize with each other, they therefore, so far as may be practicable, should consult and advise together as to what is best to be done to protect their mutual interests and honor:
Cedar
Governor Moore mentions not only slavery, but peace, interests, security, and honor. I don't consider that as a statement declaring slavery as the cause of secession.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
(I highlighted your text (will it show?) so as to emphasize.)
They felt something that they feared, were afraid and were dubious and alarmed!
Seems to me that this is all based on a supposition that Mr. L. would deny their rights, before the fact, and they didn't care to wait to find out.
You are right. The Southern states didn't wait to find out. He was their president. That the Northern section could elect a president that wasn't even on the ballot in most Southern states was alarming and very revealing to the South of the dire nature of her political position in the Union. It brought home the fact that this government was not in the best interests of the entire Union and the Southern states believed secession and a new government was the only way to retain her rights and honor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by samgrant
The S.C. govn't did all this before Mr. L. took office, so clearly they had an agenda which was predetermined.
This didn't all begin with Lincoln. It was building long before his election, but I'm afraid that's what pushed it over the top. Lincoln's "house divided" speech told Southerners he was biased against them and hostile to their institutions. All of his promises to refrain from interfering in slavery seemed to be sincere and admitting that he had no right to interfere lent the ring of truth to his words. Never the less, they couldn't count on the Republican, selected by the section of the country that remained hostile to the South, to act in the best interests of the South on any issue that would conflict with Northern issues. They believed (rightly IMO) that he was a Northern president, elected by Northerners, with Northern interests to protect.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
